COMMENT:
It's Tuesday night at the Opononi War Memorial Hall and about 40 people are waiting to hear what Billy Te Kahika has to say.
Pull up a seat - socially distanced - and take on board the vast global conspiracy he's pitching to voters as co-leader of Advance NZ, the party he leads with former National Party MP Jami-Lee Ross.
Te Kahika is warm and personal with the crowd with a knack for speaking directly to individuals without excluding others present.
"I love these small events," he says. "It's special to me."
This is The Word according to Te Kahika, annotated with actual facts.
I'm uniquely placed as the only journalist who can do this after Te Kahika halted his criticism of media when speaking on three occasions to make statements such as this: "The media - not you David - are complicit in selling us a narrative, that's proved to be false, of Covid-19 death."
As the only untainted, incorruptible journalist in the country, here is my meeting report.
Something is wrong
Te Kahika got into it: "Ninety per cent of us know something is deeply, deeply wrong. That's why I'm standing. I didn't see anyone else who was willing to stand up and say the things that need to be said.
"I'm talking about sovereignty, talking about Covid-19, and cracks in the narrative.
"WHO [the World Health Organisation] says lockdowns don't work. WHO says it's a disease no more virulent than the winter flu."
Fact check
Neither of these claims is true. WHO does have concerns about the impact of lockdowns including on food distribution, mental health and access to treatments for medical conditions. It has called for countries to weigh the consequences.
READ MORE
• Election 2020: Billy TK sets lawyers on ex-member claiming party boss is a 'CIA Agent'•
• Labour is crushing National in the polls, but Google data suggests race not over yet
• Greens prepared to walk away from part in next Government if post-election talks sour
But it also set conditions under which countries should exit lockdowns, including having disease transmission under control, being able to test, isolate and treat every single case, and track every single contract, protecting vulnerable places effectively and having educated and engaged communities prepared to live under a "new normal" - which is that the virus is here to stay for the time being.
As for the virus itself, WHO says "Covid-19 causes more severe disease than seasonal influenza". Data gathered since bears this out.
Join the dots
They call us conspiracy theorists, but - he asked the crowd - how can it be conspiracy if it is true?
"It seems very likely there is a correlation between the way this Government is managing Covid-19 and the commitments this Government has made to the United Nations."
Join the dots, he invited meeting participants - former Prime Minister Helen Clark was head of the United Nations Development Programme.
"When you read Agenda 21 ... the first 10 pages give it away. What they want to do means they will control everything to do with our lives. The UN is not a sovereign state. It's a giant NGO."
Fact check
It's called Agenda 21 because it was created in 1992 with the intent of creating a more sustainable planet by 2021, not because there were 20 "agendas" first, as Te Kahika suggested later.
Agenda 21 was a non-binding (that means not compulsory) agreement signed in 1992 by 178 governments to set out objectives to fight poverty, promote health care, control pollution and reduce dangerous waste. It aimed to do so through reducing inequity across economies and through education, science and international co-operation. NZ signed up to this when National Party leader Jim Bolger was Prime Minister. For the conspiracy to hold true, he would have had to convince Jenny Shipley, Helen Clark, John Key, Bill English and Jacinda Ardern to go along with it.
Bible, intelligence, internet
Te Kahika tells the crowd he was motivated to research the "truth" behind the pandemic after returning from the United States, where there was no organised government response to Covid-19, and finding New Zealand where people were told the virus meant "you're going to die".
Fortunately, he had three tools that allowed him to see the truth - the internet, and an introductory course in military intelligence taken during his short stint in the NZ Army 20 years ago. Also, he knew his Bible.
Particularly, Te Kahika saw warning in Revelation 13, which begins: "And I stood upon the sand of the sea, and saw a beast rise up out of the sea, having seven heads and 10 horns, and upon his horns 10 crowns, and upon his heads the name of blasphemy."
Te Kahika told the crowd: "I knew what was coming down the pipeline but I didn't know how they were going to do it."
When Covid-19 emerged, and he listened to how the Government was announcing its arrival, he says he realised - clicking his fingers emphatically - that "they've released a bio-weapon".
Fact check
Any comparison between the United States and New Zealand should probably start with the data. The US, with 330 million people, has had 6.3 million cases and 191,000 fatalities. New Zealand, with 5 million people, has had 1792 cases and 24 deaths.
The NZ Defence Force confirmed Te Kahika enlisted in the Army in September 2001 and left service in January 2003. The Herald has confirmed he did not serve operationally.
Fact-checking prophecy in the Bible is tricky, so I'll park that.
But the bioweapon claim is one that's been dismissed by academics, intelligence agencies, medical experts and scientists. Unless he meant it's nature's bioweapon.
The plan
"I created a map - actors and players," Te Kahika told the Opononi crowd. "The scenarios I developed - who's who in the zoo, and the actors around Covid-19."
The crowd was fixated, not restless, and he continued, talking about how he hit the internet and - using his introductory military intelligence course of two decades ago - began mapping out the connections.
He started with Dr Neil Ferguson of the Imperial College in London, whose forecasts formed part of his advice to the British Government at the outset of the pandemic.
Te Kahika slammed Ferguson as an alarmist who had forecast "hundreds of thousands of deaths if not millions of people dying".
"A few weeks later he retracted everything. His projections were wrong.
"Then we heard from Anthony Fauci [director of the United States' National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases]. 'It's lethal' [he quotes Fauci saying]. Then who enters the scene? Dr Bill Gates. Oh hang on, he's not a doctor."
Gates also claimed the virus was deadly, says Te Kahika. Then he quotes Gates saying: "I'm going to do you a solid and my companies will develop a vaccine."
Then Te Kahika drops a bombshell: "He's been funding research into coronavirus for years!" If you go online, as Te Kahika had, you can see Gates and his related businesses held coronavirus-based patents for years.
What's worse, Te Kahika said, Gates had told a reporter 18 months ago he invested in vaccines because "for every dollar invested, I get a $20 return".
Now back to Fauci, says Te Kahika, "he didn't declare a conflict of interest - he sits on the board of the Bill Gates Foundation".
"He didn't mention that. He didn't mention he had funded a certain scientist from Wuhan working at Fort Detrick bioweapons lab. This is all documented."
Fact check
Where to start? Ferguson's projections did not forecast "millions" of deaths in the UK. He did forecast a "worst-case scenario" of hundreds of thousands of deaths if nothing was done to stop transmission of the virus. If strict social distancing was followed, and other measures, he forecast 20,000 deaths. As it stands, Britain records 41,600 people as having died.
Ferguson has not retracted his estimates but provided ongoing estimates based on information as it became known, in line with health measures taken.
Fauci has raised concerns about the lethality - because the virus is lethal - but the supposed links between him and Gates don't stack up. Billionaire Gates and wife Melinda set up the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in 2000 to fund health programmes across the planet to combat disease and poverty.
In 2010, the foundation joined with WHO, Unicef (the United Nations Children's Fund) and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (which Fauci leads) to launch a vaccines programme in the world's poorest countries. Fauci was on the inaugural leadership council to launch the programme - a decade ago - but never on the board. His presence on the vaccine leadership council isn't surprising, given his day job fighting disease and Gates' philanthropic involvement over decades.
Coronavirus is a family of viruses named in 1968 and this is the latest to emerge. Gates - through his foundation - has funded coronavirus research for years, and continues to do so with $500m invested in researching Covid-19.
Claims Gates stood to profit from any vaccine produced have been debunked.The foundation has no shareholdings in any of the companies working on vaccines, nor does it hold patents relating to the latest coronavirus.
There was no $3.7m funding from the US to the Wuhan Institute of Virology. This rumour - given traction by senior political figures - appears to be linked to a $600,000 payment from a New York-based infectious diseases research group called EcoHealth Alliance to the institute to collect samples for its research.
The money was part of a $3.3m grant paid by the National Institutes of Health to EcoHealth Alliance in 2014 - and re-approved by Trump's Administration in 2019 - to study coronaviruses in bats and the risk of potential transfer to humans. After the conspiracy theory gained traction, Trump cut the funding.
The conspiracy grows
"When you think WHO, think the UN. When you think UN, think WHO," says Te Kahika.
Linking the proponents of Agenda 21 to the WHO, Te Kahika zeroes in on Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, who he describes as a member of the "Communist Liberation Front of Ethiopia".
Tedros became head of WHO in 2017. He was Minister of Health in Ethiopia from 2005-2012. "He's a communist, this man, make no mistake about it."
Te Kahika goes on to describe how those who opposed Tedros in Ethiopia "caught cholera", and also highlights links between Tedros and Gates.
Those links were valuable when Covid-19 emerged because Gates apparently rang Tedros, giving $53m "to make sure it's a pandemic".
"Then WHO declares it a pandemic."
Te Kahika shifts from a global perspective to New Zealand.
"Then enters - back in our country - Dr Ashley Bloomfield. He spent one year in the infectious diseases division in WHO in Geneva." Okay, concedes Te Kahika, it was the non-communicable disease area but ...
"Anyone who spends a year in the WHO culture has been cultivated and indoctrinated in the UN. It's interesting, eh?
"Then enters Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern. Who knows her background? She started off young and had an internship with Helen Clark ... head of the UN Development Programme in New York.
"You do not become number three in the UN unless you're fully onboard the programme. They will not allow you in unless you're 150 per cent indoctrinated. Helen Clark is the matriarch of globalisation."
Te Kahika traces Ardern's work for Clark to Britain and her role as the president of the International Union of Socialist Youth. "It's a 'Who's Who' of politicians."
He digresses briefly into communism and socialism, which tie into the message he's pushing about Agenda 21. "There's only two groups - there's the hierarchy and there's the herd.
"The Government winds up owning all the businesses, they control everything. They know when you clock in and when you clock out.
"[Ardern] is completely indoctrinated into the socialist area. The thing about socialism - look how many people they killed. There's 120 million in the 20th century murdered by socialist governments. You disagree with them, you're dead.
"When you examine the doctrines of the UN, it's socialism."
Fact check
It should be no surprise that the UN and WHO operate on similar lines - WHO is the UN's agency for international public health.
The political grouping Te Kahika appears to have meant to associate Tedros with was the Tigray People's Liberation Front, one of two Ethiopian groups who overthrew a dictatorial regime and set up the country's democratic Government in 1992.
It was originally a Marxist organisation but dropped such links and ideology after the collapse of Soviet communism, moving towards more centrist politics after the revolution.
While Te Kahika also pointed to Tedros being Health Minister without being a doctor, the WHO leader is a biologist and public health researcher.
As Health Minister, Tedros sourced millions of dollars internationally to improve health outcomes in Ethiopia, including from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. There is no evidence to show any payments of the sort described by Te Kahika.
The cholera reference appears linked to allegations in 2017 while vying for the WHO job that Tedros covered up three cholera outbreaks in Ethiopia while Health Minister. The outbreaks were classified as "acute watery diarrhoea" - a symptom of cholera - when no laboratory confirmation was available. The claims were made by an adviser working for a candidate competing for the WHO role.
The Bloomfield-Clark-Ardern references are broadly accurate but there is no evidence to support the imputation of a collaborative agenda.
The International Union of Socialist Youth was formed in 1907 and works to promote democracy, human rights and youth policy through engagement with national and international organisations, such as the UN. Ardern was elected president in 2008.
Te Kahika's argument then becomes ideological, and he is clearly arguing against socialist-style governments. His view that the UN is a socialist organisation contrasts with that of socialist groups, which view it as a tool for imperialism.
The claim communism (although he says "socialism") killed 120 million people is an internet regular and is as regularly countered with claims capitalism killed as many or more people.
"You're crazy Billy"
"When I first started lecturing about this, people said, 'you're crazy Billy'," Te Kahika says.
But no, he says, there's others who are also saying the pandemic is overblown. Take Dr Simon Thornley, the epidemiologist from the University of Auckland.
"He was saying this Government had over-reacted. He says 'let's take a chill pill' and 'elimination of this disease will not work'."
Te Kahika asks the crowd: "Have we ever eliminated the flu? Have we ever eliminated pneumonia?" The crowd murmurs "no".
The UN is saying lockdown isn't working, he claims, and the CDC (the US
Centres for Disease Control and Prevention) is saying the same thing. WHO has revised the lethality, he says.
"I'm really caning the media - except David - because they're calling us conspiracy theorists. We're critical thinkers.
"I think this Covid crisis has a couple of threads to it that lead to one agenda - to implement Agenda 21. They want to create exclusive non-human grow zones. They will take your land from you ... and control the flow of food production.
"In order to bring in this system, they have to collapse a country economically."
An audience member gasps, "wow", as Te Kahika continues to explain how Ardern was present at an event hosted by Melinda Gates at which she would implement Agenda 30.
"But to implement Agenda 30, we need to go through Agenda 21."
Fact check
Thornley is the most commonly interviewed of the Covid Plan B group of academics that has said lockdowns are unnecessary, instead pushing for a level 2 type scenario with careful management of transmission.
The group says the risk of the virus is overstated, that eradication of the virus is unrealistic and the economic impact of prolonged lockdown outweighs the risk of managing the system through the health system.
Their views are in the minority, with academics, bureaucrats and medical experts weighing against their plan. Thornley has also been accused of "spectacular cherry-picking" when it comes to information used to support the group's claims.
The UN has not said lockdown does not work, nor has the CDC, and WHO has revised lethality as more has become known about the virus but it still rates Covid-19 as deadly and more dangerous than the flu, for example.
The flu has not been "eliminated" but a vaccine has been developed. It needs constant tweaking to deal with different strains of the virus. There is also a vaccine for pneumonia although its effectiveness varies, again an illustration of how difficult vaccine development can be.
Agenda 21 - as stated above - is a voluntary international move towards sustainability. It aims to offer a framework for how our planet develops, rather than allow uncontrolled growth and the damage that comes with it. It is not one in a numbered sequence of plans - Agenda 30 is named for the year 2030, and takes the goals of Agenda 21 and reasserts those as objectives.
Ardern met Bill and Melinda Gates at an event hosted by their foundation at which she spoke about a focus on wellbeing to reduce inequality. New Zealand is a signatory to Agenda 21, so it would hardly be surprising for the Prime Minister to endorse its objectives.
The end is nigh
The meeting is drawing to a close. Te Kahika runs through a few other touchstones for the crowd - 1080 and its supposed impacts, what he sees as suppression of religion and those who speak of it being treated as creating "hate speech" and the way Big Pharma has blocked natural remedies.
"I'm not talking about the kooky stuff," he clarifies.
If elected, he pledges to set up a People's Commission which will "investigate all the things that have been done to us".
Judging by tonight's talk, which ran a little over an hour, it would have its work cut out for it.
Then Te Kahika thanked everyone for coming and invited people to stay for a cup of tea afterwards.
Those who hung about for a bit spoke of frustration with the Government, not having a voice and not believing what they were told. Here in Hokianga was the voice of the disenchanted, the disenfranchised.
Te Kahika was speaking directly to them, and they listened.
Fact check
There was tea and it was hot. That was the most reliable aspect of the evening, along with the inviting welcome offered by Te Kahika and his team.
His claims of a vast conspiracy do not stand. With the Bible in one hand and the internet in the other, you can string together anything.
These claims just don't stack up. Having covered government and politics for more than 30 years, I can tell you this - they are just not that organised.
It gives too much credit to government and politicians to think they can manage a worldwide conspiracy over three decades across dozens of countries to seize control and dominance of the world's population.
Sometimes they struggle to manage tea that's as good and hot as that served in the Opononi War Memorial Hall.
Also, the conspiracy requires all these claims to be true. That means every link above has been manufactured to support the claim, or been produced by those either wittingly or unwittingly part of the conspiracy. That is extraordinarily vast, and yet has maintained its secrecy while operating in the open for at least 30 years
There's an overwhelming amount of information online that shows the conspiracy to not be true. It makes me wonder what those finding the contrary actually set out in search of to come up with "proof".
